Individualism Is a Sin: Attention and Intention are Required
based on a sermon preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Albany, July 25, 2021. You can access the transmission of the sermon here, beginning in minute 17:17
The lesson from II Kings 4:42-44 (Common English Bible) inspired these thoughts:
A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing the man of God some bread from the early produce—twenty loaves of barley bread and fresh grain from his bag. Elisha said, “Give it to the people so they can eat.”
His servant said, “How can I feed one hundred men with this?”
Elisha said, “Give it to the people so they can eat! This is what the Lord says: ‘Eat and there will be leftovers.’”
So the servant gave the food to them. They ate and had leftovers, in agreement with the Lord’s word.
There was no shortage of news in the weeks preceding this sermon regarding social engagement and community responsibility. I had joined federal, state, and local officials reminding the parents and guardians of over 87% of minors throughout New York State that the Child Tax Credit was being disbursed in cash, and encouraging those who do not traditionally file taxes and who qualify to report themselves and their children in order to receive this significant albeit temporary cash support from the federal government.
The Schenectady Community Ministries, the organization I serve as CEO, was already 1/3 of its way into our summer meals program. For the past 27 years, SiCM has served free meals to school-aged children and youth throughout the city of Schenectady. During the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021, regulations blanketed the whole city of Schenectady, and even areas in Rotterdam, Scotia and Niscayuna as areas of need, making children there eligible for these meals. During the summer of 2020 we served just shy of 60,000 meals. This year, the United Way estimated that we could hit close to 62,000 meals.
The day I shared this sermon I joined a press conference in Schenectady where community leaders gathered to call on our local hospital system to be transparent with the community as a large regional hospital system buys them up and community engagement has all but ceased in this process.
Gun violence became the focus of Albany’s local government narrative, including the murder of two persons in separate circumstances the Friday and Saturday preceding my sharing this sermon. Violence throughout the city was increasing, no question about it. And City Hall referred to this crucial situation of public safety and community stability as an issue of certain parts of the city that needed to be managed.
There were many other things I could have shared about Saratoga and Rensselaer counties. A quick read of local and regional newspapers, or having listened to local public radio would be enough to grasp the crisis we were in - a crisis of ability to engage as a larger society and to be responsible for each other in the community. The pandemic, of course, made everything worse. I am no expert in public health policy. However, generalized numbers of high vaccination rates in Schenectady and Albany counties, and in New York State continued to ignore very specific areas where vaccination rates roamed well under that generalized number, some well under half of eligible persons.
We need to pay attention to our response to all of these – individual, congregational, social, and political, especially if that response goes unchecked. Our initial responses to these, or to other news regarding public policy and public safety, are based on our biases. Most of us will have reacted considering how “they” are cause or victims of these circumstances. Maybe some of us even went as far as to think that these issues do not affect us – individually, as a congregation, in our social circle, or our political standing.
If this is your and/or my reaction, it’s ok. Our prejudices are set in our social and communal beings. There is no way to escape them. What we can do is decide how we will act upon them. A hallmark identity of U.S. American economic and socio-political structures is the obsessively committed encouragement of personal individualism in culture and society. Individualism, the U.S. American standard operating procedure, is core to how we live our social beings. Individualism drives many of us to social reactions that rationalize the pain, marginalization, and downright evil that others are suffering as “their” issue. We seek to make sense of the pain, suffering, and marginalization of others by believing the lie that accomplishment is a possibility with sacrificial personal effort. That rationalization often takes form in this way: “they” - that other that looks, sounds, lives, or earns differently from the individual or collective “I” - are going through “that situation” because “they” were not as socially, politically, financially, or theologically efficacious as the individual, yet often collective “I” is.
“I am tired of leading in this dissonant social space where individualism reigns on the one part, and the Spirit is leading us to embrace each other in reverent obedience.”
Individualism is what drives many of us and in this society to articulate constitutional freedoms as individual freedoms – rights that apply first and foremost to “me.” Individualism is what is drives the conversation about vaccination access, mask options versus mandates, pushing for an achievement of normalcy that is really a generalized yearn to go back to the future.
As a faith leader, I find myself living in a dissonant social space. I find nowhere in our Holy Scriptures a sanctioning of individualism. U.S. American Christianity, however, especially our Reformed branch of that Christianity, especially the branch that presumes (and often calls) itself to be more orthodox, has over 300 years of theological argumentation for individualism in society and salvation. I hope others find themselves in in a dissonate social space. I would go even a step further and join those that have articulated individualism, especially the U.S. American kind, a sin. Far from fostering a right relationship with God, individualism drives us as individuals, as a society, and as a culture away from God. Individualism drives us away from God’s most basic call to the Church in and through the example of Jesus – to love God with all that we are, and our neighbor as ourselves. That example goes hand in hand with the call to go share the good news of Jesus to the farthest corners of Albany and of the world. Individualism is nowhere in the message of Jesus. What is more – when directly confronted with his own cultural and religious biases, Jesus took a step back and corrected his action and message for the sake of that good news he embodied.
The lesson of II Kings, chapter, for, was a respite for me this week as I continue to inhabit the dissonate space between the social reality of individualism, and the contradictory call I find in the gospel. In just three verses, the lesson shows us four social commitments the prophet Elisha lived by, social commitments with profound theological repercussions – hospitality, doubt, solidarity, and provision.
We see hospitality in the generous gift brought by a Canaanite man to the prophet, a messenger of the religion of Israel. Hospitality is shown in bread and grains brought to the prophet – bread and grain from the first fruits, the best of the harvest. We see hospitality in the turning of a personal gift into the call for a feast for all that were present. Hospitality is about generosity, is about seeing and being with and for the other. Hospitality is about giving generously what has been received generously.
We see doubt in the reaction of the prophet’s servant to the order to share the gift. The gift was intended to be a generous, perhaps extravagant gift for one person. I’d be concerned with 100 people, perhaps around the time for a meal, wanting to eat and just enough food for a few. Doubt is one of the most human feelings and actions. Our social upbringing urges us to suppress doubt. This lesson, and the whole of the Scriptures, encourage the followers of Jesus to embrace doubt. No need to ignore it. Doubt is a part of who we fully are.
We see solidarity in the lesson in that this gift was given to a person of a different ethnicity – ethnicities that were pegged against each other for no other reason than the political control of the ruling class and theological sanctioning for political expediency of the religious class. Solidarity takes hospitality one step further – it demonstrates unconditional welcome. Solidarity takes generosity one step further, for it is about sharing what one has as if it wasn’t ours in the first place. Solidarity is about the courage to believe that if God says there is enough for everyone to eat, there is enough for everyone and then some.
And it is there that provision is seen in the text. When a people show hospitality, when a people learn to embrace doubt and other human feelings, when a people decide to pay attention and be intentional about how they live and move and have their being in society expressing solidarity, provision happens. Abundance happens when a people decide to obey reverently that most basic expectation of humans – to be respected, to be welcomed, to be included, to be sought out, to be seen for what each one of us is.
And here me well, I am talking about a people obeying reverently. The call is not for individuals. The call is to a people. Elisha was not leading a life of a personal relationship with God. Elisha was a godly man, but everything he said and did was for people, with people, and by people. Nowhere in this text does it say that those 20 loaves of bread magically multiplied into a feast. The only thing this text says is that bread and grain were gifted generously, that doubt was voiced, that solidarity was practiced, and provision happened because a people embraced who they were as a community of humans and decided to believe what the Lord had said through a messenger. They obeyed reverently because they believed that despite the appearance of some among them, despite what the amount of food might have seemed, despite any other doubt or social prejudice that might have existed, a people acted with attention and intention for the sake of each other, for the sake of community.
I confess that I am tired of leading in this dissonant social space where individualism reigns on the one part, and the Spirit is leading us to embrace each other in reverent obedience. To go up and against the forces of this world built on individualism, we will require attention and intention. But we have been gifted with all it takes. For hospitality, solidarity, and provision are all at our grasp because the Lord has said so. May we believe in the word of the Lord with attention and intention. May we obey reverently with attention and intention that most basic expectation of humans – to be respected, to be welcomed, to be included, to be sought out, to be seen for what each one of us is – a full expression of the image of God.
May it be so.
Amen.